This is the Allegheny County Jail as seen from the Eliza Furnace Trail (a.k.a. the "Jail Trail"), a walking/biking trail in downtown Pittsburgh. The image was made with a homemade pinhole camera, the cylindrical variety, hence the distorted view. I don't use a tripod of any sort, and the camera is very light. The only platform available to get this view was a guardrail. Imagine how suspicious (or just crazy) I looked holding the camera, a Quaker Oats can, steady against the guardrail and counting off.
This was a twenty second exposure at ~f/226 on Ilford Grade 2 Resin Coated paper. The scan was straight from the paper negative and inverted. There were no exposure or sharpening adjustments.
As an aside, lunch usually smells pretty good at the jail around this time.
f/226, huh? That's pretty darn impressive! I really do get a kick out of these Quaker Oat shots. So you seal the paper in there in the dark, keep the pinhole covered until time to expose, then expose, then cover it back up and cycle home, then develop the paper?
Response #1: You make it sound so dirty.
Response #2: No, Deb, you got it all wrong. I take the bus.
Response #3: That's about it, in all its reckless simplicity. My "shutter" is a piece of black electrical tape, the inside is lined with black foam, and the pinhole is a piece of disposable pie tin, pricked with a pin and sanded down. Duct tape holds it all together. Neat, huh?
f/226, huh? That's pretty darn impressive! I really do get a kick out of these Quaker Oat shots. So you seal the paper in there in the dark, keep the pinhole covered until time to expose, then expose, then cover it back up and cycle home, then develop the paper?
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